Daraty Completing Circuits in MIT Arab Competition

The Middle East is making its way into the electronic learning world, slowly but surely. Since some areas in the Middle East specialize in the scientific stream in education, technology plays an important part in it nowadays. However, in some of these areas it can be a difficult thing to go after due to the limited accessibility of required resources. In Syria, Daraty sprung up as a way to make learning electronics as simple as possible. Check out what this shortlist for the 9th MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Startup Competition is planning for the children of the Arab world!

What does Daraty mean? In Arabic, Daraty means ‘my circuit’ and it’s a hardware toolkit that is simple-yet-effective educational tool for children ages 7 and up. Designed with interactive group learning in mind, the fun-packed kit that aims to teach kids the basics of electronics without the need for expert supervisioncomes with a mobile application that uses friendly content with animated tutorials to help users understand and learn. The app tracks circuit building progress, detects circuit errors and explains how to fix them.

“Our kit is designed to be child-friendly and extensible. It’s upgradable to support new circuit elements and new languages, with our current focus being on Arabic.”

The brains behind this amazing idea are two senior engineering students, Al-Hasan Muhammed Ali, the developer, and Sana Hawasly, the executive. We, at BarakaBits, asked the Daraty team a few questions about their creation, check out the Q&A below:

What makes Daraty special? That is, what is the core benefit received from your product or service?Daraty is the first product of its kind in the Middle East–– It’s designed by Syrian engineers to help Arabic-speaking children build electronic circuits using original content that communicates with children using their everyday native language.

“Our software is unique for it provides kids with instant feedback on errors in the circuits they are building, and immediately suggests solutions to help them build functional ones. It boasts simplified and easy-to-navigate scientific content”

Which users do you target? Specific countries? Specific gender or age bracket? We are targeting children ages 7 and up through collaboration with schools, child-focused organizations, in addition to parents who care about their kids’ innovation. Our product is focusing on Arabic- speaking children, but is also user-friendly to kids around the world.

What are the main obstacles that you have faced in the development of Daraty? Building a new educational technology from scratch with very limited support was one of the biggest challenges we had to overcome.

Why did you apply for this competition, in particular?In other words, other than to win, what do you hope to gain from this competition? We do believe that our project doesn’t reach its full potential just by relying on the efforts of our small-yet-energetic team. We believe in the importance of being a part of a community where we can connect to others, learn from them and exchange our acquired knowledge and experiences. Projects like Daraty must not be locally-bound or limited from growing and utilizing shared knowledge and partnership.

Alongside being a semifinalist of the this year’s MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Startup Competition, Daraty is now shortlisted to the semifinals of GIST Tech-I competition.

Daraty can be reached on Facebook or via email at: contact@daraty.com. Visit their website and Facebook page to learn more about Daraty.

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I was born in Palestine but raised with the fireflies in Georgia. My teenage years were spent being the Muslim nerd who was known as the bookworm of the school. That followed me back to Palestine, to develop into being the girl with the big vocabulary. I spent most of my high-school days cursing Newton for not eating that apple. My English Literature Bachelor's degree was only obtained because I'm a nerd for literature and my minor in Translation pretty much pays the bills, thank you Birzeit University.Creative writing is my passion and reading is my escape from reality into a world where everything is the way you imagine it to be.